Trump: 'Robert E. Lee was a great general'

[Ouroboros]

Not so fast.

You could stumble running off like that with your tail between your legs.

It happened to a lot of Reb soldiers and mostly because Lee, Forest Gump and the rest of 'em were pompous fools.

Which general was Forest Gump again? And is he fat like the one in the book, or skinny like Tom Hanks?

 

[Tangmo]

Grant did not have a Gettysburg.

Sherman did not have a Gettysburg.

Sheridan did not. Nor did McClellan, nor did Burnside, Hooker and all the rest of 'em.

Only one Union general had a Gettysburg. And that was Meade. Meade succeeded in getting the high ground thanks to a great extent to Buford. Meade knew Lee would try to turn the Union flanks so Meade had prepared his V Corps to hold. Indeed, Lee spent the second day trying unsuccessfully to turn the Union flank, at Little Round Top especially. Colonel Joshua Chamberlain of the 2nd Maine won the Medal of Honor there along with a dozen of his men. Lee ordered flanking attacks repeatedly throughout the second day. He failed.

At dawn the third day Meade was ready with General Hancock at the Union center along Cemetery Ridge. Hancock commanded 8000 infantry and numerous batteries of artillery with a variety of new and deadly shot. Hancock's infantry were a thousand across eight rows deep rifles extending over the shoulders of their brothers who were only inches in front of 'em -- inches at the most.

Three quarters of a mile across the wide and open field Longstreet and Pickett argued to Lee against an assault. Of course the two argued against it because each was rational. Lee said they must attack and he insisted victory was assured. On what basis Lee said this neither Longstreet nor Pickett knew. Longstreet was assigned command of the assault from his command post. Pickett returned to the woodline where he knew the fate of his division. Pickett's charge launched while Pickett remained in the woodline. Longstreet watched his corps be decimated. Lee failed to abort the attack, sending three divisions to their death between Lee's breakfast and his lunch. Lee rode hard to Pickett to order Pickett's division to form a defensive line along the ridge behind 'em. "Sir," Pickett wailed, "I have no division."

"It's all my fault" Lee cried out repeatedly as he rode Traveler to the staggering Rebel stragglers finding their way back to camp. It was the only time in four years Lee was right. Until Appomattox at last when Lee surrendered to Grant.

 

[Tangmo]

"Hades" and "fallen angel"= mixed metaphor. If Lee had been the President of the CSA, your equivalence might almost work. Try going through PARADISE LOST and see if you can find some lesser devil who's put in charge of Satan's armies.

I've given no free rides; rather, I've denied free rides to either side. That's because there were bad people on both sides then, just as there are now. That ought to be the real message of "bothside-ism," that the Left doesn't get the privilege of enshrining Antifa thugs-- like the ones who helped cause the trouble at Charlottesville-- because they CLAIM that everyone they hit or harass is "a Nazi."

Are people who forgive treason also moral traitors?

General Lee would be granted amnesty and not tried for treason. His citizenship, however, would not be restored until a posthumous ceremony featuring President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Along with Jefferson Davis.

It was the Nixon Southern Strategy. Nixon and Sen. Strom Thurmond R-SC.

 

[Ouroboros]

General Lee would be granted amnesty and not tried for treason. His citizenship, however, would not be restored until a posthumous ceremony featuring President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Along with Jefferson Davis.

It was the Nixon Southern Strategy. Nixon and Sen. Strom Thurmond R-SC.

Anyone else here interested in answering the question I posed? I for one consider it more germane to the topic here than endless virtue signaling.

 

[OpportunityCost]

Poignancy hasn't ever been my thingy so you can abandon that tact. I don't even try and if I have to try in anything I move on to something else easier.

That's strike six (and seven) btw so you've managed to pull off your single handed double out. Grab some bench why doncha.

Thx though for stopping your rapid exit to come back and talk more. So here's RE Lee's estimation of Grant as a general, from the book on Grant by General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall...


Within a few weeks of Grant's death, a member of General Lee's staff [Col. Marshall] said to a friend: "That reminds me of Lee's opinion of your great Union general, uttered in my presence in reply to a disparaging remark on the part of a person who referred to Grant as a 'military accident, who had no distinguishing merit, but had achieved success through a combination of fortunate circumstances.'

General Lee looked into the critic's eye steadily, and said: 'Sir, your opinion is a very poor compliment to me. We all thought [pg. 26] Richmond, protected as it was by our splendid fortifications and defended by our army of veterans, could not be taken. Yet Grant turned his face to our capital, and never turned it away until we had surrendered. Now, I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have never found Grant's superior as a general. I doubt if his superior can be found in all history.'" ​

Knowing that Colonel Marshall was General Lee's military secretary, present at Appomattox, the message he gave was that Grant was knightly and noble and General Lee thought so also. Grant's terms, according to Colonel Marshall, were carefully written as to not humiliate the Confederate Army. The terms addressed the shedding of American Blood...not South, not North --not Confederate, not Union/Federal. This impressed General Lee, with emotion according to Colonel Marshall.

https://www.amazon.com/Grant-Military-Commander-Marshall-Cornwall/dp/B000YE8EP0

From a review of the book, "Grant As Military Commander" authored by General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall who fought in two world wars and later visited each of Grant's battlefields and read all Grant's operations orders and documents...

Marshall-Cornwall had heard the old canard that Lee was brilliant, the second coming of Napoleon, and that Grant was a grinder who butchered his men. However, upon examining Grant's battles and reading the battle orders and battle summaries of both Union and Confederate generals, he was surprised to find that while both Grant and Lee were laudatory generals, it was Grant who was exceptional.

Like Fuller, Marshall-Cornwall found this was due to Grant's comprehensiveness. His army was always adequately supplied, likely due to his prior experience as a quartermaster, and he was able to see complex military issues in simple terms and, thereby, rather than being overwhelmed by them, he dealt with them efficiently one at a time. Grant out-planned his opponent and saw three moves ahead which allowed him to coordinate his effort so that brilliancy was not required to prevail.

With basically the same army as commanded by his predecessors, Meade, Hooker, Burnside, etc., Grant went up against the same army Lee had used in the Eastern theater. Within two months, Grant had pushed that army back upon Richmond and crossed the James River, threatening Lee's line of supply. Thereafter, Grant held Lee in place and, thereby, prevented the Confederacy from joining its armies to stop Sherman's destruction of the Southern heartland.

Like most analyst of the Civil War, Marshall-Cornwall found Grant's Vicksburg Campaign to be the greatest bit of generalship during the war. It is the only campaign during that war which continued to be studied in Europe.

https://www.amazon.com/Grant-Military-Commander-Marshall-Cornwall/dp/B000YE8EP0

Its ****ing hilarious, I agreed with you, but your ego is so ginormous that you have to drone on and on. You have a lot more in common with Trump than you think.

 

[Waddy]

Then you ignore all that preceded Gettysburg and all that followed...

One battle does not a General make.

What makes you think I ignore every battle besides Gettysburg? Gettysburg was simply an EXAMPLE of Lee's poor generalship. If you look at battles where Jackson had a major role the tactics were far superior to any other general on the battlefield. But Jackson was accidentally killed by one of his own men after Fredricksburg, and afterward Southern tactics under Lee ignored the technological improvements (a couple of which I mentioned) Jackson was so aware of. Typical of most generals most of the time throughout history, Lee was fighting the last war, not the current conflict. Lee failed to implement an appropriate strategy (his two forays into the North were disasters; Antietam and Gettysburg) and his penchant for frontal attacks against entrenched defensive positions proved a poor and costly tactic for an army that desperately needed to conserve it's manpower. On the other hand, Grant knew he had men to spare and could afford costly tactics; and further Grant understood the way to beat Lee was to keep the pressure on, no matter the cost in men and materiel. Grant was no genius either, but he had an endless supply of men and materiel; he knew how to use that advantage to simply wear down Lee's army. Which is exactly how he won that war.

 

[Tangmo]

Its ****ing hilarious, I agreed with you, but your ego is so ginormous that you have to drone on and on. You have a lot more in common with Trump than you think.

My posts are not defined or determined by a particular poster's rules, wishes or degrees of reaction thx anyway. If you can't take agreement reinforced then that's not my problem. It would be your cooked up issue entirely and completely. Overcooked besides as you repeat your feeling about it droning on and on. Likewise for your pronouncements as you try to crank it up over there. You agree so rarely that you bungle it when you do it. :shock:

 

[Tangmo]

Grant was a strategist and an American patriot. Lee was a Virginian and a tactician.

Lincoln was a strategist while Jefferson Davis never gave a serious thought to strategy.

The Grant grinding 'em down myth and wearing 'em out tale lives on however, but only in the cliched minds of the intellectually lame and lazy.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant


On February 29, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was appointed General-in-Chief of the Union Army. As soon as Grant received the news, he met with General Sherman. Grant’s plan was that Sherman would go after Joe Johnston while he would go after Robert E. Lee. Grant once said: “The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.” Grant’s strategy was different from all the others. He believed the Union should focus on the Confederate army and not the Confederate capital.

Grant's strategy confused the south. No other commander kept going except Grant. The Overland Campaign was very successful -- it led the Union into Petersburg and to take Richmond. Grant's strategy of not retreating worked and he led the Union to victory.

Ulysses S. Grant's Strategy

Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman


Two Generals From Ohio Conceive of The War Winning Strategy

Col. S. M. Bowman, a member of Sherman's staff, described the scene in "Sherman and His Campaigns":

"In a parlor of the Burnet House, at Cincinnati, bending over their maps, the two generals, who had so long been inseparable, planned together that colossal [strategic] structure ... and, grasping one another firmly by the hand, separated, one to the east, the other to the west, each to strike at the same instant his half of the ponderous death-blow."

Grant, in his autobiography, explained that Sherman was to attack Gen. Joseph Johnston's army in the South and capture Atlanta and the railroads, effectively cutting the Confederacy in two. Grant was to pummel Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia.

Sherman famously summed up their strategy: "We finally settled on a plan. He was to go for Lee, and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was his plan. It was the beginning of the end as Grant and I foresaw it here."

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/ne...rman-made-plan-that-ended-civil-war/10624757/






The Three-Pronged Strategy of Grant and Sherman

Most military and civilian leaders of the time looked only at the prospective battle (tactical issues); the education of Civil War officers simply did not prepare them to think strategically.

All of the strands of Union strategy came together when Ulysses S. Grant became general-in-chief of the Union armies in February 1864. He composed a strategic plan for ending the war by November that included simultaneous attacks against the main Confederate armies in Georgia and Virginia, as well as key areas and cities. The plan was a good one, based upon a clear understanding of the political, strategic, and operational realities facing any Union offensive, and comprised of mutually supporting operations. An adjunct element was the use of raids against Confederate supply and industrial points.

Grant’s plan and its modifications, did succeed in laying the groundwork for victory. Sherman would take Atlanta on September 2, 1865, securing Lincoln’s reelection, and thus the continuance of the war. The Confederate defense of Atlanta and Virginia would half-destroy the Army of Tennessee, and eventually kill the Army of Northern Virginia. Sherman would also proceed to attack Southern resources, armies, and will in his march across Georgia and the Carolinas.

Simultaneous advances; destroying Confederate armies and resources; attacking the people’s will; these became the primary strategic actions that brought the Union success.

The decisive element in Union victory was its construction and implementation of a coherent strategy that addressed the nature of the war, one the North tenaciously pursued. This was in part the result of the critical fact that from the beginning of the conflict Lincoln sought a method for winning the war; Davis never sat down and tried to figure out how the South could achieve its political objective of independence—and the Confederacy perished.

https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/civil-war-strategy-1861-1865.html

 

[Fledermaus]

What makes you think I ignore every battle besides Gettysburg? Gettysburg was simply an EXAMPLE of Lee's poor generalship. If you look at battles where Jackson had a major role the tactics were far superior to any other general on the battlefield. But Jackson was accidentally killed by one of his own men after Fredricksburg, and afterward Southern tactics under Lee ignored the technological improvements (a couple of which I mentioned) Jackson was so aware of. Typical of most generals most of the time throughout history, Lee was fighting the last war, not the current conflict. Lee failed to implement an appropriate strategy (his two forays into the North were disasters; Antietam and Gettysburg) and his penchant for frontal attacks against entrenched defensive positions proved a poor and costly tactic for an army that desperately needed to conserve it's manpower. On the other hand, Grant knew he had men to spare and could afford costly tactics; and further Grant understood the way to beat Lee was to keep the pressure on, no matter the cost in men and materiel. Grant was no genius either, but he had an endless supply of men and materiel; he knew how to use that advantage to simply wear down Lee's army. Which is exactly how he won that war.

Grant good general =/= Lee bad general

Jackson better general =/= Lee bad general

I suspect if Jackson lived longer we would have seen a fair share of failures on his behalf.

Most generals of the time would employ Napoleonic tactics with the occasional flanking movement.... A thrust to the middle and hope to turn a flank. Classic warfare.

Lee did it. Grant did it. Sherman did it.

Until they didn't.

 

[Waddy]

Grant good general =/= Lee bad general

Jackson better general =/= Lee bad general

I suspect if Jackson lived longer we would have seen a fair share of failures on his behalf.

Most generals of the time would employ Napoleonic tactics with the occasional flanking movement.... A thrust to the middle and hope to turn a flank. Classic warfare.

Lee did it. Grant did it. Sherman did it.

Until they didn't.

Thanks for making my point. People who think any of those three were great generals is an idiot. There is no reason to think Jackson would have acted differently and therefore lost battles had he lived.

 

[Fledermaus]

Thanks for making my point. People who think any of those three were great generals is an idiot. There is no reason to think Jackson would have acted differently and therefore lost battles had he lived.

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Sherman's actions in the Atlanta campaign were outstanding. Grant knew how to fight as well.

As to Jackson....

His actions in the Seven Day's Battle were sub standard...

Late to the party at Beaver Dam Creek and Gaines's Mill he delayed the Confederate assaults.... At Savage's Station he did not follow Lee's plan therefore allowing the Union army to detach unmolested.

Later he was sluggish and did not cut off the Union forces yet again.

Jackson wasn't perfect.

Nor did he face entrenched positions in the Valley Campaign so we will never know what he would have done facing them.

 

[Waddy]

?????????????????????????

Sherman's actions in the Atlanta campaign were outstanding. Grant knew how to fight as well.

As to Jackson....

His actions in the Seven Day's Battle were sub standard...

Late to the party at Beaver Dam Creek and Gaines's Mill he delayed the Confederate assaults.... At Savage's Station he did not follow Lee's plan therefore allowing the Union army to detach unmolested.

Later he was sluggish and did not cut off the Union forces yet again.

Jackson wasn't perfect.

Nor did he face entrenched positions in the Valley Campaign so we will never know what he would have done facing them.

I never said Jackson was perfect, just better than the other generals on either side. He understood the necessity of swift movement and the extended killing range of contemporary ordnance better than any of them. What Sherman and Grant knew was that they had to keep the pressure on and that modern war meant wreaking destruction on civilians, ala Vicksburg. In those aspects they were indeed ahead of their time. Their great "tactic" was to simply keep fighting, regardless of losses, because they had unlimited human cannon fodder and an abundance of materiel. Doesn't take a genius to know that when your advantage is men and materiel, you keep pressing ahead despite the huge losses. Hell, even Lincoln, who had no military training, knew that. It's what angered him about Meade after Gettysburg; he failed to pursue and engage Lee as he retreated South. That's why Lincoln fired Meade. To hell with tactics; Lincoln wanted a general who would keep up the pressure. That general turned out to be Grant; not a strategist nor a tactician, but he knew how to keep pounding on the Rebs.

 

[Tangmo]

Edward H. Bonekemper, III of The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable has written several noted books on the civil war. Here's from one of 'em that presents the factual record of Lee vs Grant. Lee for instance lost more men per 1000 than Grant did. Grant's larger armies imposed more casualties on CSA armies than Grant suffered, which busts the myth that Grant butchered his troops in battles and campaigns.

Let's look at the facts...


After Vicksburg, Grant’s cumulative casualties were about 31,000 while he had imposed over 77,000 on his foes. So Grant had gained control over a wide swath of the western Confederacy and made Confederate armies pay the price for opposing him, while Lee had decimated his own army in a series of strategic and tactical offensives that were unnecessary to the stalemate the Confederacy needed.


Having won the Mississippi Valley and saved the trapped Union army in the Middle Theater, Grant was the obvious choice to be brought east and promoted to general-in-chief. His troops’ total Western and Middle Theater casualties were 37,000, and they imposed 84,000 casualties on their opponents. He had won the West and was expected to win the East, the Middle Theater, and the war. With Sherman’s help, he lived up to those expectations.


After Lee’s first fourteen months of command, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had incurred an intolerable 98,000+ casualties by the close of the Gettysburg Campaign. These losses left Lee’s army too weak to effectively stymie Grant’s Overland Campaign to Richmond and Petersburg in 1864 and eventually resulted in Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865.


Lee’s aggressiveness resulted in a single general’s record 209,000 casualties for his army (55,000 more than Grant’s); those were casualties the South could not afford.



"Ironically, Grant, who could not even obtain a command at the beginning of the war, rose to the top of the Union armies and oversaw victories in three theaters of war. Lee, on the other hand, started near the top in the Confederate hierarchy of generals, and oversaw the slaughter, decline, and surrender of his army – despite the fact that the rest of the Confederacy was drained of soldiers to replace those killed and wounded under Lee’s command.

Why Grant Won and Lee Lost



In his book Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship by British military strategist Maj.Gen. JFC Fuller, the WW2 armor commander noted that Grant was a very efficient and successful commander who lost fewer men per thousand than Lee.

https://www.abebooks.com/Grant-Lee-Study-Personality-Generalship-Fuller/8064480551/bd


We over here welcome the occasion of demolishing Confederate Myth and the Confederate Fanboys at each and every opportunity such as this thread enabled by Trump and his ignoramus remarks.

 

[Tangmo]

Major General J. F. C. Fuller organized the first British tank corps in World War I, and developed the strategy and tactics of tank warfare which were later put to such effective use by the Nazis for their World War II blitzkriegs. His many books include A Military History of the Western World (3 volumes); The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant; Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant; and The Generalship of Alexander the Great.

In Fuller's book on Grant he wrote...

The greatest event in American history was the Civil War; greater than the Rebellion, because separation from England was sooner or later inevitable. The man who most greatly influenced this war was Ulysses S. Grant; not because he was so clear-sighted a statesman as Lincoln, or so clever a tactician as Lee, but because he was the greatest strategist of his age, of the war, and, consequently, its greatest general.

Grant was not of the type of Alexander, Cæsar, Frederick and Napoleon: he was a simple-minded man of vision, and one who for nearly forty years remained an obscure citizen of the Great Republic.

In writing this book my object has been to examine what Grant accomplished as a soldier; to show that as such he has not been fully appreciated, and that as he looked upon war as a necessary evil so long as peace remains imperfect, we also may find in his honesty and in his vision our direction towards creating a happier and less turbulent world. "Let us have peace," Grant concluded as he signed Lee's document of surrender.

https://www.amazon.com/Generalship-General-Ulysses-S-Grant-ebook/dp/B074T6SLGH


One could say that a civil war was as inevitable as was the successful rebellion against British rule in the colonies. The failure of the post civil war occurred when the requirements of the Electoral College enabled the former Confederacy to leverage the premature end of Reconstruction, in 1878.

 

[Tangmo]

The worship of Stonewall Jackson needs to be tempered by a dose of reality....



The Five Flaws of the Brilliant General “Stonewall” Jackson

Despite his brilliance, General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was a deeply flawed commander, whose faults may have prevented him from achieving his full potential. In noting these flaws, however, his many successes become even more striking.


But this religiosity also tainted his approach to command. He held Sunday sacred to a degree that was extreme even for the time. Regarding fighting on Sunday to be a sin, he would only do so after much soul searching and great personal debate. In one of the first total wars of the modern era, avoiding combat and even command on one day in seven was a serious limitation.

This was exacerbated by Jackson’s approach to promotion among his troops. He is said to have preferred good Presbyterians over better-qualified officers, leading to a force that lacked the best possible commanders, and whose leaders were full of the same prejudices and limitations as its commander.

General Jackson’s “Chancellorsville” portrait, taken at a Spotsylvania County farm on April 26, 1863, seven days before he was wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville.


Jackson’s attitude to command was in line with his religious disposition, being stiff and unswerving in adherence to the rules.

While training at the Virginia Military Institute, he refused to deliver a report a single minute earlier than he had been told to. He ended up pacing in a driving hailstorm outside the Superintendent’s office rather than provide his message early and get into shelter. This attitude was further shown by an anecdote from his days as a junior officer. Having received no orders to change his heavy military greatcoat, he wore it all through the sweltering heat of a long summer, rather than act on his own initiative.




The men beneath him often didn’t know about their commander’s intentions until the very last minute. This left them unprepared, both practically and psychologically, for what they would be asked to do. Regardless of the cause, his failure to share details of his plans made his command style seem secretive. It also fostered an atmosphere of distrust and resentment toward Jackson.



Jackson suffered from a range of ailments that impeded upon his ability to command. Service in the artillery had left him with notable hearing loss in both ears, a bar to good communication, but most of his difficulties were not caused by the army life. The sources of his ailments are debatable, but given the limited medical understanding of the era, all we can be sure of are Jackson’s symptoms. One of the biggest issues was Jackson’s need for sleep. He slept for long stretches and was easily exhausted, to the point of falling asleep while still eating his food. After the Valley Campaign, he was completely wiped out, on the verge of collapse from fatigue and the stress of the campaign. Lee relied upon Jackson to play a vital role in the fighting, but the support he expected from Jackson did not manifest itself, as the man’s weariness finally overtook him. Jackson’s troops sat inactive while their commander slept.

William Andrews, a volunteer from Georgia, recorded the general’s poor horsemanship. His stirrups were too short, his knees too high, and his feet turned at the wrong angle. Jackson was neither an elegant nor an impressive rider and this often meant that he made a poor impression on the troops he was leading into battle.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/vi...2-machine-guns-to-save-a-wounded-soldier.html





How in the world did they shoot Stonewall Jackson?

How in the world did they shoot Stonewall Jackson? | HistoryNet


Not many generals were shot by their own men. Maybe Jackson was sleepwalking.